What Media Formats are Supported with Plex Media Server

by Jesson Jordan ·
Published 21st February 2017
· Updated 21st February 2017

Nowadays a lot of Media Servers are really great help in home theater entertainment, in this page we will learn about Plex Media Server and list of various file formats playing natively on the Plex media server together. Even you can backup DVD and Blu-ray movies to Plex for watching.

In order to playback and save your favorite movies for watching on TVs, computers, phones and tablets at anywhere anytime, Plex Media Server could be the best solution. It allows users to manage their libraries, server settings, and watch content via browser-based interface. That is say, you can store all your movies on a Plex central server and watch them on your TV, computer, iPad, or phones both home and away.

What is Plex Media Server?

Plex is a centralized home media playback system with a powerful central server – the Plex Media Server – that streams its media to many Plex player Apps. The Server is available on many platforms like Windows, Mac OS, and many flavors of Linux, as well as many NAS devices like ReadyNAS or Synology. You use an App to view your media library and watch shows. Apps are available for PCs, mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, and many Smart TVs.

What media formats are supported?

General Media Support

Notes

MP4 container

Video Encoding: H.264, H.265 (HEVC), mpeg4, VC-1

Audio Encoding: AAC, AC3, EAC3, MP3

Other content will need to be either Direct Streamed or transcoded

MKV container

Video Encoding: H.264, H.265 (HEVC), mpeg4, VC-1

Audio Encoding: AAC, AC3, ALAC, FLAC, MP3

Music Support

AAC

ALAC

FLAC

MP3

M4A

WAV

Other supported audio formats will be automatically transcoded for compatibility

Does the app support DTS audio?

At present, there is no support for 3rd-party applications to play DTS audio. Content with DTS audio will have the audio automatically transcoded by the Plex Media Server in order to preserve the surround sound audio channels.

How to Sync Blu-ray movie, DVD movie and incompatible video and audio formats for Plex?

Form the table above we know that, the Blu-ray movie, DVD movie and many ohter format such as MOV, AVI, WMV, MXF, XAVC are not supported by Plex. Then how to play the movies from Blu-ray or DVD disc and incompatible videos via Plex? May be rip the Blu-ray and DVD disc to MP4, convert incompatible videos files to MP4 is your best choice.

MP4 in H.264 codec with AAC would probably be best suitable for most clients, absolutly for Plex Media Server, as we also listed in Plex Media Server general media support table. And here we would like to give the simple guide to rip Blu-ray and DVD disc and convert incompatible format for Plex Media Server:

The trail-before-purchase quick download icon provide here, you can also click “learn more” turn to Brorsoft page for download.

Keep in mind that you have download the right version, Windows platform .exe files can be installed on Mac OS – and vice versa.

Step 1: Add source video files

Load Discs: Insert the Blu-ray disc to the Blu-ray Disc drive or DVD to the DVD-ROM and click the

Load Disc button to have movies uploaded to the Blu-ray Ripper. You can also import ISO files, IFO files or Blu-ray/DVD folder for conversion.

If you need to backup Blu-ray with wanted subtitles and audio track, you can click the drop down menu after “Subtitles” and “Audio” to select your desired tracks. What’s more, it also offers an option called Forced subtitles, which enables you to see subtitles only when actors are speaking a different language.

Step 2: Select output format

Select an compatible format, e.g. H.264 .mp4, since it is most compatible with Plex and almost any devices.

Basically the “Common Video -> H.264 Video (*.mp4)” is just all right.

Tip: If you think the video size this not suitable for your devices, you can first choose any one of the provided type, then change the settings. Please remember the file size is based more on bitrate than resolution which means bitrate higher results in bigger file size, and lower visible quality loss.

Step 3. Start to rip Blu-ray or DVD disc or convert videos for Plex

When all the settings are OK, click “Convert” button to rip Blu-ray / DVD disc or convert the source video files.

You can view the conversion progress and are able to cancel the converting process at anytime …

When the conversion is over, click “open” to locate the ripped Blu-ray / DVD movies or converted videos, and then you can transfer them to Plex media sever for playing with all of your portable devices on-the-go.